There was a deal reached this week between the record companies and SoundExchange over music webcasts. It was presented by some as a win for webcasts even though Pandora’s own blog notes that the royalty rates are higher than for any other form of radio. Others such as Techdirt call it a death sentence for Internet radio. One thing I found interesting was that the opinions varied almost entirely depending on whether it was an Old Media or New Media source. I think they’re both right.

What it means is that services like Pandora, Last.fm and Slacker Radio get a short term reprieve. They’ll be able to suck up the fees and stay in business for a while but I think the royalty rates are too high to be sustainable long term. On the other hand, it will almost immediately kill off any smaller webcasters that are interested in staying legal.

What it means long term is that the recording industry has killed another legitimate source of revenue and if there is no free web radio to listen to people will download and listen to stolen music for which there is no income associated. They should have embraced web radio and given them royalty rates at least comparable to conventional radio – increasing the number of people listening to paid music. Instead they continued their death dance with Clear Channel.

Here’s a clue for you, RIAA. Nobody likes their corporate, sounds the fucking same everywhere, committee programmed bullshit. Some people will tolerate it but the number who will is becoming increasingly few. They are doomed and so are you. But frankly I think that’s a good thing for both musicians and listeners.

No Comments »

No comments yet.

RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URL

Leave a comment